IN the autumn when the acorns began to fall the children found no end
of amusement in making them up into all sorts of people and animals.
Some were converted into soldiers—Japanese, with blue kimonos and
Russians with long fur overcoats—and often they were lined up for
battle. Ruthlessly the children shot them down with bean shooters.
Since their sympathies were with the Japs, of course the Russians
suffered most, yet there were losses on both sides.
While the brown of the acorns suggested Japs and Filipenos, it was
equally suggestive of our own negro people, so numbers of these were
made with their blue checked gowns and red bandanas.
Then there were just ordinary acorn men and women, with acorn heads on
toothpick necks, and bodies of twisted paper.
One attractive pair was dressed in corn-colored crinkled tissue paper.
A round disk of the paper was pasted to the top of the head of each
for the brim of a hat, and the cup of the acorn pasted over that for a
crown. No prettier doll hats could be imagined.
The shoes these little people wore were of ink.
Everything the acorn family had was made, like themselves, of acorns.
Their cups and saucers, their plates, their baskets, their tops, and
their pigs, even, were of acorns.
Tom enjoyed the tops most. These were made by running slender
toothpicks, or shoepegs, about halfway through the acorns which spun on
their own points. Games were often played with these tops.
[Illustration: AN ACORN MAN]
When any one wanted to know which army would be victorious in battle
two tops were set spinning on a plate and each named for an opposing
army. The one falling over first was defeated, of course. Sometimes one
spun itself off the plate. That meant a retreat.
Disks of bright colored paper were often placed above the top on the
toothpick or shoepeg. When red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet
were used and all the tops set spinning at the same time, this meant
that a rainbow had gone to pieces and each color was doing its best to
get back into its proper place.
[Illustration]